Rip Snorter's Blog

Some thoughts about (The War on) drugs

One of the threads on LP recently involved a man in the NE who committed grand larceny against a lottery ticket buyer. He was charged with a misdemeanor, a slap on the hands.

This led to a few remarks about why that happened.

The reason it happened is called ‘The War on Drugs’.

We no longer have a priority to prosecute and dissuade crimes with victims because the system is chock full of drug criminals, loaded to the gills. And every piece of the system is biased in favor of continuing in that direction so long as the Feds pour money into local police departments, judges get more jobs, lawyers get richer, prisons bulge with money and funding.

A bank robber was asked why he robbed banks. “Because that’s where the money is,” he replied.

Sorry folks, but the money on the streets is in drugs, the money in criminal justice is in drugs. It’s not in prosecuting the guy who steals your car, rapes your daughter, or mugs you.

I’ve been blessed to have been intimately familiar over the last half century with a lot of people who were users of, or were addicted to illegal drugs. I can say without reservation that I believe use of those drugs is a lousy choice for a person to make with life.

I’d go a step further and say, based on hard experience, that Meth users, both tweakers and blasters, are, without exception, among the sorriest, least-trustworthy, most incorrigible I’ve ever encountered.  To call them swine would be a defamation of character to the hog community.

However, having said that, I’d also point out that the so-called War on Drugs is an abysmal failure. It’s had a quarter century to succeed, cost buzzillions of dollars, filled the prison houses, made legions of lawyers wealthy, gotten us hundreds of thousands more cops, judges, restrictions and intrusions into who can kick our door down, and when. It’s driven the price of drugs so high they’re more available today than when the War on Drugs began in 1980.

Thousands of young girls are now ‘Coke whores’ in every city in America. Thousands of young men who committed no other crime than possessing a forbidden substance are being raped nightly in our prisons. And any drug anyone wants is easily obtainable anywhere, same as always, but with a higher pricetag.  Even inside the prisons.

Maybe it’s time for some re-thinking on how much we’re willing to sacrifice to keep people from making lousy choices.

Maybe it’s time to put recreational drugs, pharmaceutical quality and drugstore prices on the shelves where people can buy them without helping to support the legions of scumballs feeding on the illicit drug business whether they’re Meth cooks, cops, lawyers, judges, legislators, prison guards, or local crack house operators.

Jack

 

35 years or so ago I was spending some time hanging around the Geology Department of the University of Texas at a time when science was demonstrating to itself how turbulent and destructive any new and better ways of explaining reality can be.  Old-time, high ranking profs and department heads knew geology, knew it as it had been known, been developing for the past 50 years.  Had published papers on it, hung their hats on it.

Suddenly, along came plate tectonics theory, continental drift, turning all the hardened theories upside down.  The young lions of geology (untenured) broke their careers, many of them, betting on plate tectonics, but failing to realize how absurd any theory of continental drift was in relation to surviving that career moment.  The old timers weren't about to put up with having the tablecloth yanked out from under the dinnerware they'd spent their careers building.

A few years later plate tectonics was a given... the underlying theory for all planetary geology.

Similar things have happened in physics regarding chaos theory and the still-emerging quantum theories.

But scientists aren't the only ones guilty of nailing things down on the corners, once they've established a truth, based on what someone told them, or their own limited experience (however broad).  We all tend to do that.

And if we aren't careful, we find ourselves wishing failure on others based on the nature of our own entrenched positions.  If someone manages to come up with something different, something that defies what we know, we tend to believe it somehow takes something away from us.  We WANT them to fail, to reaffirm what smart fellas we are.

There are lots of smart geologists in this world, smart physicists, smart mathmaticians, most traveling down a road that's already paved.... a few are going off-road.... most of those off-roaders will find their ways back to the beaten path because most new ideas tend not to work out in the long haul.  But a few will be the forerunners of what everyone will believe and entrench themselves into a generation from now.

The problem is, there's no way of judging which is which until the returns are in.  No matter how absurd an idea is, it's not too absurd to be 'right'.  And no matter how 'right' the current party line conventional wisdom is, it's not too 'right' to have people laughing to think some idiot believed it a generation ago.

Strange folks, us.  Our preference for already being right will always trump our curiosity... almost always. 

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep, the end is near. 

If you want to see this you're going to have to look soon.... Mercury's neck and neck with Venus at 9PM, maybe 3.5 degrees (still less than a fingerwidth at arms length) due south of the larger planet.  1.5 hours above the western horizon.  (Hold your hand out at arms length, put the top finger holding up the celestial body you're interested in and fold the fingers that go below the horizon.... every finger that fits between the cestial  body and the horizon is 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, (I know you're waiting for this with baited breath) the sun's edging toward Cabazon, but still a hair north of the base.... I'm betting on July 4 to see it galump down the smokestack.

Jack

 

 

It wasn't my intent, penning my none-of-my-business thoughts, to convey the idea that anything can be done by this lazy, sleepy,  bovine citizenry to restore the situation, to restore the Constitution of the US.  It wasn't even my intent to imply this population would wish to do so.

Nothing of the sort is going to happen, nothing of the sort could possibly happen short of a cataclysmic event bloodier than the Civil War.  Today, if 49 of the 50 states passed resolutions to dissolve the current government, remove the seat of power from Washington to Omaha, re-pass the original Constitution of the United States, the overwhelming power of the US Military would be used to circumvent their completing the act.

You younger people are stuck with what we older people have brought about in our lethargy, trust and hopes of using the power of government to force people who believe differently than we do to get themselves right or go to jail, if they're citizens, or suffer being bombed or shot, if they live outside our boundaries.

Learn to love it.

Jack

 

 

 

Time was when Americans had a healthy regard for human frailty and the dangers of an imperial Executive Branch, President, Congress, and absolute power concentrated within the Federal Government.  The framers of the Constitution installed enough safety devices in the system, they believed, to give hope that future generations wouldn't have to deal the inevitable tendency of those in power to accumulate more power.

The framers trusted the population, an uneducated, but common-sense citizenry, to mistrust a strong central government.

It took an extraordinary circumstance to give the first Imperial President an opportunity to circumvent the Constitution and seize absolute power for a while.  One-half of the Congress absented itself from the proceedings.  The serving President refused for two months to negotiate with them, even meet with them, but, during that time-span, because of the impotence of Congress to act, accrued enormous power by default to the presidency.

When war broke out, it was a presidential war, the first in the history of this nation.  One half of the population of this country, by order of the president of the United States, used force of arms to impose its will on the other half, completely without any pretence of advice and consent of Congress, vote by the population, anything but the will of the executive.  Abraham Lincoln.

The result was the bloodiest war in US history until Vietnam.

For several generations following the Civil War mistrust and fear of Executive power returned to the citizenry.  Even the winning side could easily see, without dwelling on it, the mischief wrought by absolute power in the seat of the Presidency.  For an interval of several decades after Reconstruction there was a renewed respect for strict adherance to the Constitution in all matters, including formal declaration of war by Congress.

Prior to the Great Depression and the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the standard response to efforts of any branch to seize power beyond that defined in the Constitution was mention of the reminder that 'if we don't like something in the Constitution, there's a mechanism for changing it through amendment'.

That response carried enough weight to bring about a Constitutional Amendment to confine the number of terms a US President could serve in office (now 10 years), following the four-term President-for-Life administration of Franklin Roosevelt.

But after WWII, the Cold War offered extraordinary arguments once again for an Imperial President waging wars without the consent of Congress, supported by a committee of nine Supreme Court judges to amend the Constitution without having to formally amend it.

That's gone on so long, when the Cold War ended the population was too young to remember anything else, to remember that there's a document called the US Constitution, that it defines the powers of each branch of government, provides means to amend itself.

Outmoded, outdated, that Constitution.  Overwhelmed by the abdication of power by Congress, human frailty, human cowardice, blind, sheeplike trust in mama government by the citizenry.

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

Mercury now moved maybe 3 degrees due South (less than a fingerwidth at arms length) of Venus, running neck and neck.  Probably two, 2.5 hours above the horizon.

Rio Grande valley was so obscured by smoke most of the day Cabazon was invisible at sunset.  I'm thinking July 4 will be the day the sun will drop down the smokestack.

Sun must have set fire to some trees somewhere off to the West when it went down a couple of days ago.  That's all I can figure to account for all this smoke in the air.  Maybe over around Mount Taylor.

Couple of years ago the worst fire in recent AZ history was set by an Apache forest fire fighter out of need for employment.  Wind was out of the SW .... that fire filled most of the NM sky with ash and smoke for weeks .... some thought it was a nuclear war we hadn't been advised of.... some thought those Los Alamos science boys had dropped another atomic bomb on us the way they did in '45. 

But this has to be North of Apache firefighter country.... maybe over in Navajo, Zuni, Acoma, Hopi or Laguna territory.  Maybe even  Ute.

But I'm betting it was just the sun did it.

Jack

 

 

Unanimity

 

She was mayor

Of course

Chief of the cops

Sometimes ran the sewer plant.

Although the berg was small

It always seemed a nation

When those yes-men

All those yes-men

Saluted.

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I knows what the lowbrows want and I gives it to them!"  William Shakespeare

War News:

 

 

 

Jack

 

 

You don't need one of these.  But I like making them  anyway.... confuses the opposition.  Strollers on that dirt road yonder stop and stare, shake their heads, walk a bit further turn around and shake their heads again when there's a new one.

Those PB numbers, MM numbers didn't look half bad the last draws.  Nothing broken, sprained, not even too badly bruised so far as I can tell.  I didn't play except a QP, haven't studied them much, but they looked okay at a glance.

Red sky to the west on the horizon with a lot of smoke threads woven in.  Sailor'd want to be careful today.

 

Jack

 

 

That butte, the volcano plug is Cabazon. 

I'd have sworn the sun went straight down the smokestack of Cabazon on Solstice.... have told people as much.

Well there it is, still a week north of Cabazon on June 29.

Nice evening.... forest fire season's started, thinks I.... all day the sky was full of smoke. 

But it surely made a fine sunset.

Jack

I suppose the allignment I've been watching the past few nights is Venus and Mercury.... last night Mercury was roughly a degree south, but appeared to be gaining.... Now it's a good two degrees further south and definitely pulling ahead.

Jack

I read somewhere about fifty years ago that you can tell the exact moment of dawn by holding a white thread at arms length and when you're able to distinguish whether the thread is black or white, it's dawn.  I've always intended to try that sometime.  But I've never been able to make it a priority enough to remember to do it.  Can't think of a single reason, that time of the morning, to want to know the exact moment of dawn.

You can get a fair bead on when it is because of all the night critters tucking themselves in and yawning, and all the day critters walking around yawning and wiping the sleep from their eyes.  Makes it a good time for the cats, because nothing's as alert as it might be, except felines.

Occasionally one of the closeby people will see a pair of coyotes run between our houses on their way to a lair in that pile of wood in the thicket yonder about this time, but after they've killed a few pets bunched up too closely together in time, things tend to get too hot for them to be showing themselves for a while.

But I see I'm rambling .... I was planning to offer up a few observations about those MM numbers last night, but I think I'd best put on some coffee, instead, and go out front for another smoke while I wait for it to burble.

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

If I was on the brink of doing something 'planned' stupid, as opposed to being constantly on the brink of doing something impromptu stupid, something planned the way a person plans to slit his wrists in the bathtub and dropping in a plugged in lamp, or hang himself in the garage leaving a suicide note blaming it on his offspring, here's what I'd do:

I'd play the following numbers on MM tonight:

1	13	21	33	42	51
5	16	28	34	49	55
9				46
				47

On the other hand, allow me to catch you before you kick the chair out from under your feet and begin the soft-shoe dance routine while you evacuate your bowel into your underwear.

Don't do it.

Jack

 

Here’s an expansion on a half-baked set of assumptions that will probably be laid to rest
with the PB draw tomorrow night:

Premise 1)  PB and MM have enjoyed a triple-helix spiral relationship from their
earliest times.

Premise 2)  The numbers in each draw are ‘controlled’ by the highest numbers in a three-
draw set, PB/MM/PB, or MM/PB/MM.  Every high-end number, or combination of
numbers has a complex ‘pool’ of smaller numbers associated with it.  These associations
have been established over a long series of draws and have become somewhat rigid.

Premise 3)  The introduction of a pool of higher numbers without the history of
association as a result of the MM matrix change will squeeze, jar and rattle the helix
pattern because of the larger pool of high-end numbers now forced into the same number
of draws as before.  The old associations won’t dissolve immediately, maybe not at all. 
But the ‘driver’ numbers on PB between 40 and 53 will feel an increased pressure to hit
PB, instead of MM, because of the reduction in square footage of living quarters on MM.

 

This phenomenon should manifest itself on the PB draw tomorrow night, if it happens to
be true, which, of course, it isn’t.

Jack